Jajoo hoping to make history in Sugar Land as city's first South Asian mayor next year

By Leah Binkovitz

Published 12:11 pm, Tuesday, September 22, 2015

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Harish Jajoo, is Sugar Land's first South Asian mayoral candidate.

Harish Jajoo, is Sugar Land's first South Asian mayoral candidate.

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Joe Zimmerman

Joe Zimmerman

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Jajoo hoping to make history in Sugar Land as city's first South Asian mayor next year

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Somebody is going to be first, figured Harish Jajoo, why not him?

He's been a Sugar Land City Council member since 2011, has decades of experience as an engineer for the city of Houston and has lived in Sugar Land since 1985, watching it grow and transform into a community that's 35 percent Asian.

Jajoo, one of two Indian-Americans on the six-person council, is making a bid to be the Fort Bend County city's first South Asian mayor. He will face City Council colleague Joe Zimmerman, also an engineer working in the private sector - and possibly others who have not declared yet - in the 2016 election to replace term-limited Mayor James Thompson.

It's not the reason he's running, but his race reflects, in part, the evolution of the city and the greater Houston region.

"I look different, I talk different, maybe I eat different," said Jajoo, who came first to Canada and then the United States from New Delhi when he was 20. "But my values for the city are no less than the next person."

He rattles off a list of Indian groceries, restaurants and dance studios in Sugar Land. He knows eventually a South Asian will be mayor of the city.

"I'm not looking for that label," he said.

While it doesn't matter necessarily who is first, it matters that there is a first, according to pundits and politicians.

"You see it first in the classroom, next in the workplace and then you see it in the ballot box," said Stephen Klineberg, sociology professor at Rice University about Houston's increasing diversity.

He often calls Fort Bend the most ethnically diverse county in the world with its near even population of Latinos, blacks, whites and Asians.

"It's a question of when, not if," Klineberg said.

In Fort Bend County, the Asian population has grown more quickly than any other group, according to a report released by Klineberg and his colleague Jie Wu in 2013. The population went from 6.5 percent of the county in 1990 to 19 percent in 2010. This mirrors a national trend.

"This increase is more than three times that of the U.S. total population, and greater than any other major racial and ethnic group," reports the study.

Low voter turnout

Historically, Asian-Americans have had low voter turnout, a fact Elena Ong partly attributes to the percentage of the population still not naturalized. That is expected to change as the voting-age population shifts from largely naturalized citizens to second-generation communities. But there are other factors as well, according to Ong, including language and cultural barriers, a lack of institutional support and a disconnect between American politics and the community.

"Established parties, and candidates, may not reach out to these communities as frequently as they do to other ethnic voting blocs," wrote Ong in an email.

Some movements counteract that, including several efforts that took root in the Houston area. Former Houston council member Gordon Quan grew up in Houston after spending the first few years of his life in China. Around the time Martha Wong became the city's first Asian-American council member in 1993, the community had begun organizing to get its collective voices heard. As an immigration lawyer, Quan said community members came to him before politicians at the time.

"I had clients who ran grocery stores getting robbed and they were scared to go to the police," he said.

Early efforts to create safe zones where they could report crimes without being asked about their immigration status were met with resistance.

A coalition was formed.

"It didn't make a difference if you were Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, whatever," said Quan.

They got noticed and eventually politicians began approaching them, asking how to get an endorsement.

'This can happen'

In 2003, MJ Khan became Houston's first Muslim council member.

"There were maybe less than 10 percent precinct chairs from South Asian communities before I got into City Council," Khan said. "After I got in, the very next year, people were going all over town and talking about it; 'Why don't you put your name?' All of a sudden you saw around 70 or 80 people got elected to precinct chairs and that was huge."

"Even though I never ran as a Pakistani-American or a Muslim-American, I was what I was," said Khan. "It really opened the eyes of many people in the Asian community. This is possible. This can happen."

National efforts to organize and amplify the Asian American vote intersected with their cause as well. With such a diversity of backgrounds within the Asian American community, the vote is not necessarily monolithic although it leans Democratic, according to Janelle Wong, a professor at University of Maryland and the author of Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities.

But the story in Fort Bend County seems different. The county still votes largely Republican despite its noted diversity. According to Wong, South Asians in particular leaned heavily Democratic in the most recent presidential election, but local elections may play differently.

"Sometimes survey researchers ask a question, if you had the choice of two candidates and they had the same quality would you vote for a co-ethnic candidate, and Asian-Americans do say yes to that," said Wong.

But she said that doesn't necessarily mean they'd support a candidate across party lines.

'Straight to suburbs'

It's a familiar narrative. As communities get first settled and secure and then involved in politics, the priorities inevitably shift. Again, the story in Sugar Land is a little different.

"One group of immigrants, largely Asian and African, are coming with far higher levels of education than Anglos," said Klineberg. "Especially the Indians and Chinese."

And when they get there, they're typically welcomed, according to Sugar Land City Council member Himesh Gandhi, whose parents came from India but who was born in Canada before moving to Sugar Land as a kid.

"The city is a city of inclusiveness, it's very diverse," said Gandhi. "Having a City Council reflect the makeup of the city is not unusual in my opinion."

Jajoo ran against another South Asian candidate in his most recent race. The numbers reflect an engaged political community nationally, according to Ong. Citizens from India tend to have higher voter registration and turnout rates versus those from Korea, Vietnam or China after they are naturalized.

Issues are priority

Because Gandhi's seat is an at-large position, he had to reach all segments of the community. "You need to be able to touch those voters who are engaged in the process and that's going to range across each of the communities," he said.

That's the plan for both candidates running for mayor at the moment.

"As you can see from the representation on the council, we don't get hung up on what our backgrounds are," said Zimmerman. "We get hung up on the qualifications."

Both candidates name safety, infrastructure and economic development as major issues in the community. And because the council positions are all part-time, council members tend to bring a variety of experiences to the table while working elsewhere.

"We're not politicians per se," Zimmerman said, "We're very much business people. We come from very diverse backgrounds and we all bring that perspective to building the city."

Being the first South Asian candidate for mayor and possibly the city's first Asian mayor is important to Jajoo, but not just because of what it means to that community.

"That gives me a sense of pride because I'll do a good job," he said. "I want to make Sugar Land the best place to live, work, play and raise families."